


Emergency Contact

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hospitals, Human Disaster Garcia Flynn, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, POV Female Character, Post-Season/Series 02, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 13:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15607716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: The Time Team continues to adjust to civilian life... slowly. Denise continues to be default Bunker Mom (she may question the wisdom of this sometimes.) Denise and Michelle are adorable. Garcia Flynn is useless. Cars ignore bicycles. Life, in other words, proceeds very much as normal.





	Emergency Contact

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about the friendship between Denise and Flynn, and this idea wouldn't leave my head.

“I’m ignoring it,” mutters Denise, belying her words by reaching with one hand to pick up her phone, leaving her other arm around Michelle’s waist. The kids are at music and soccer camp, respectively, and such occasions are not to be squandered... The next moment, she’s tightened her grip on both. “Hospital,” she mouths, before accepting the call. “Hello? …This is she.”

“You know a Garcia Flynn?”

“I… yes.” Denise’s brow furrows, but she gives Michelle a reassuring squeeze. _Not Mom, not the kids; whatever this is, it’s going to be fine._ Her hearing goes momentarily fuzzy, however, after she processes the words ‘traffic accident.’ Because if he was in an accident, and they’re calling her… _Lucy_. Denise catalogues probabilities automatically: surgery? coma? She does not quite allow herself to consider the third possibility; she drags her mind back from wondering about how she would tell him, wondering about what he might ask her to do. She swallows hard, braces herself to ask the question — what about the woman? — and then hears what the kind, professional voice on the other end of the line is saying.

“…So we’re informing you as his emergency contact.”

“…What?”

“Since you’re listed as his emergency contact, we’re informing you directly. According to our records, there is no next of kin?”

“No,” says Denise automatically; “no, that’s correct. Thank you.” She ends the call.

“That looked like a rollercoaster,” says Michelle frankly. “Bad news?”

“I… I’m not sure. Yes. Sort of. Not as bad as it could be.” Denise burrows further into her wife’s side, feels Michelle chuckle.

“You’re thrilled about going, I see.”

“Hate hospitals.”

“What if I offered to bribe you with saag paneer this evening?”

“Hmm.” Denise lets her hand wander over Michelle’s knee, up the rich contours of her thigh. “Saag paneer and…?”

Michelle laughs, swats half-heartedly at her. “You are awful." Denise, nothing deterred, moves in to kiss her, unhurried. "Anyway," says Michelle at length, a little dazedly, "who’s bribing whom here?”

“Mutual bribery,” suggests Denise, happily illogical.

“Right,” says Michelle. “Well then.” She nudges Denise. “Sooner you go…”

“Yeah.” Denise swings her feet off the couch. “Let’s see what he’s gotten himself into this time.”

***

Denise frowns down at him, trying to arm herself against sympathy. It probably looks worse than it is, she tells herself firmly. Mercifully, he wasn't knocked into traffic; mercifully, the car wasn't speeding. Still, those abrasions can’t be fun. Someone has left his dented bicycle helmet on the shelf of the bedside table, presumably as a kind of trophy of survival. Why the hell — why the _hell_ — is she the one here?

When Flynn first blinks into consciousness, he doesn’t look thrilled about it, but his gaze snaps into focus when he sees her. “Denise. You didn’t have to…”

“The hospital called me,” she informs him dryly. “You want to tell me why I’m standing here?”

He sighs. “Because you’re a good friend, Denise.”

She grabs the chair behind her with one hand, gets it into position. He winces a little at the scrape of the legs on the linoleum. She tells herself that he deserves no better, but what she tells him is: “You’re the unlikeliest advertisement for bike safety I’ve ever met.” That wins a wan smile. “Now,” says Denise, “why am I your emergency contact?”

He appears to be making a monumental effort to keep his eyes open. “You were my handler.”

“Yes. _Was._ ”

He sighs again. She waits. Machines beep; as if echoing them, voices call to each other with professional briskness. She can see the moment when he breaks, with nothing as sudden as a slump. It is just a slight relaxing of tension, a soundless resignation. Denise reflects complacently that she is very good at her job. “Well?” she says.

“I can’t be traced back to her.” It’s a more specific, a more pragmatic answer than she was expecting. “If anything… happened to me — happens — ” He breaks off. “You know the sort of work I’ve done, Denise.” She wonders if he can hear it, the pleading in his voice. “If anyone were to find me…” Another pause. “They won’t find her,” he concludes resolutely. “I'm not registered at her address. There are no links. No pictures. No handwriting. I’ve been — we have been — careful.

“Go on,” he adds roughly, after a few moments’ silence. “Tell me that I’m being paranoid. Delusional. Stupid.” The last word is practically spat out.

Denise gives herself a minute before responding. No saved images on a sleek phone; no photographs cherished in a wallet; never a handwritten _I love you_ tucked absentmindedly or intentionally into a pocket. “I’m not going to tell you you’re stupid,” she says softly. “Not after… everything that’s happened.” She’s not sure that she has permission to say their names, the names of the family he lost, whose deaths he was hunted for, haunted by. He is watching her; she is watching his shallow breathing.

Denise sighs, and spreads her hands slightly in her lap, an opening up, a letting go. “Terrorist attacks, bicycle accidents… we live with risk all the time, Garcia.” He blinks at the use of his first name, but does not speak. “There’s always that chance of fire, or flood, or some idiot with an assault rifle. Michelle is still my emergency contact.” Before the lines on his brow and around his mouth have a chance to deepen further into mulishness, she continues: “Do you remember what you told me, that time when the team was in 1981?”

She watches him swallow. “What?”

“ _One second_ , you said.”

“Yes,” says Flynn hoarsely. “Yes.”

“So,” says Denise, conscious of being patient, “trust that Lucy would want that with you.” He opens his mouth, and closes it again. “No buts,” says Denise. She chooses to ignore the fact that there are tears standing in his eyes. “No exceptions. Even if you were beaten beyond recognition. Even if you were beyond recognizing her. Even if she had to watch you die, or didn’t get to.” She can hear his breath shaking — she would almost swear she can _see_ it — but he does not sob, and he does not speak. “Wouldn’t you want that with her?”

“ _Denise._ ”

“Right,” she says. “So?” She more than half-expects him to turn away, but he holds her gaze, lets her hold his, leaves himself pitilessly exposed to her. 

“I do trust her,” he says at last, simply. “And I do trust — I know — that she is more than capable of…” he hesitates, seeming to seek a word. “Anything,” he says finally, with the barest twitch of a smile. “But she has lost so much, and feared so much, and…” The sentence trails off, and he does not attempt to resume.

Once again, Denise sighs. She wonders if she should tell him that using the word of love won’t cause his life to vanish like the magic kingdom of a genie’s making, too lovely to be anything but enchantment, insubstantial. “Look,” she says. “Worst case scenario? We’re still here for her, all of us. That hasn’t changed. But for now — ” she bends, and picks up her purse — “now I am going to pick up Lucy, and give her a very stiff drink, and then get her back here.” Standing over him is the only way she’ll ever have the advantage of height; she makes the most of it. “And you are going to apologize.”

“Yes, ma’am. You’ll forgive me for not saluting.”

“I will. Make Lucy your emergency contact,” says Denise, without heat. “Oh, and once you've gotten used to keeping her picture in your pocket, you might consider making her your next-of-kin,” she adds, at the door. “Save all of us all this trouble.” For once, he is without a rejoinder, and she can’t resist looking back at him. His face is blank with shock, and she could swear that every last drop of blood has drained from it. Denise can’t bring herself to feel the least bit sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> Further notes: I think Michelle Christopher is amazing, and would welcome any speculation/fic on how she and Denise met and got to be such power couple goals.


End file.
